Follow Blog via Email

Reach for the Skies

Aircraft have fascinated me from an early age. I remember once a year, every summer, all the kids in our street used to be able to watch a free air display as the jets circled around the nearby RAF Church Fenton near York.

McDonnell Douglas F4 Phantom

When we moved away my Dad and I were annual visitors to the nearby airshow at Humberside Airport which in the mid-eighties was a huge event and which was able to attract the most exciting aircraft from the Red Arrows, to the Catalina flying boat, to Harrier jump-jets, and even on one occasion to Concorde.

McDonnell Douglas F4 Phantom

We also lived under what must have been one of the military’s training flight paths as the house was shook almost daily by Tornados screaming past and, my personal favourite, A10 Thunderbolts (or Warthogs as they are better known) whining overhead.

Avro Vulcan

Nowadays I rarely get to see military aircraft but my head is still regularly turned while out in the garden by passenger jets taking off from the nearby Leeds-Bradford airport and we like to occasionally park up for 10 minutes at the end of the runway.

Avro Vulcan

These pictures were taken at the National Museum of Flight (www.nms.ac.uk/national-museum-of-flight) not too far from Edinburgh. We have visited this fantastic museum on a couple of occasions and it is highly recommended. Their star attraction (not pictured here!) is a Concorde which you can walk around, walk under, and even go inside where you will realise it is much more cramped than you would expect!

Thanks General! I’ve had these shots for a while but only just got around to processing them. My enthusiasm for aircraft has returned in recent years, the most boring thing about them is when you have to sit in one for a few hours while they try and flog you lottery tickets.